“Of course.  You cannot speak too plainly to me.”

“Conceit; the Yankee fancies himself such an important person, that the commercial world will stand still unless he flies back to its help after ten minutes’ gobbling, with his month full of pork and pickled peaches.  And you fancy yourself so important in your line, that the spiritual world will stand still unless you bolt back to help it in like wise.  Substitute a half-cooked mutton chop for the pork, and the cases are exact parallels.”

“Your parallel does not hold good, Doctor.  The Yankee goes back to his store to earn money for himself, and not to keep commerce alive.”

“While you go for utterly disinterested motives.—­I see.”

“Do you?” said Frank.  “If you think that I fancy myself a better man than the Yankee, you mistake me:  but at least you will confess that I am not working for money.”

“No; you have your notions of reward, and he has his.  He wants to be paid by material dollars, payable next month; you by spiritual dollars, payable when you die.  I don’t see the great difference.”

“Only the slight difference between what is material and what is spiritual.”

“They seem to me, from all I can hear in pulpits, to be only two different sorts of pleasant things, and to be sought after, both alike, simply because they are pleasant.  Self-interest, if you will forgive me, seems to me the spring of both:  only, to do you justice, you are a farther-sighted and more prudent man than the Yankee storekeeper; and having more exquisitely developed notions of what your true self-interest is, are content to wait a little longer than he.”

“You stab with a jest, Thurnall.  You little know how your words hit home.”

“Well, then, to turn from a matter of which I know nothing—­I must keep you in, and give you parish business to do at home.  I am come to consult you as my spiritual pastor and master.”

Frank looked a little astonished.

“Don’t be alarmed.  I am not going to confess my own sins—­only other people’s.”

“Pray don’t, then.  I know far more of them already than I can cure.  I am worn out with the daily discovery of fresh evil wherever I go.”

“Then why not comfort yourself by trying to find a little fresh good wherever you go?”

Frank sighed.

“Perhaps, though, you don’t care for any sort of good except your own sort of good.  You are fastidious.  Well, you have your excuses.  But you can understand a poor fellow like me, who has been dragged through the slums and sewers of this wicked world for fifteen years and more, being very well content with any sort of good which I can light on, and not particular as to either quantity or quality.”

“Perhaps yours is the healthier state of mind; if you can only find the said good.  The vulturine nose, which smells nothing but corruption, is no credit to its possessor.  And it would be pleasant, at least, to find good in every man.”